Nintendo wanted to shut down entire Smash Bros. event at Evo 2013
Nintendo’s original opposition to include Super Smash Bros. Meele at Evo 2013 goes further than initially thought.
Joey “Mr Wizard” Cuellar, co-founder of the tournament, told OneMoreGameTV that the company had hoped to shut down the entire Smash Bros. section – despite speaking with people inside Nintendo who “didn’t see a problem” with the event. It was initially thought that Nintendo only rejected permission for the streaming portion of Evo’s proceedings.
Cuellar said:
“They were not only trying to shut down the stream, they were trying to shut down the event; the Smash portion of the event.
“It’s their IP, they can do whatever they want, and they didn’t present us with any options to keep it open, they were just ‘Hey, we want to shut you down.’ And we kinda wigwammed our way through it and they were fine with just shutting down the streaming portion of the event. And that was that. And we were not going to press any further. Its their IP, we respect Nintendo’s decision to protect their IP, and we were going to comply with the legal department completely. So at that point it was over.”
When it comes to Nintendo’s turnaround on the decision, Cuellar said that Evo organizers stepped away and did not press things further once permission was denied. Cuellar believes that “it had to have been the bad PR they were getting, in conjunction with the power of the internet and seeing their Smash fans saying ‘We want to see this event? Can you please let us see it?'”
